To all concerned Hampshire students:
We sincerely apologize for any confusion or anger that resulted from this question that we posed. We did not thoroughly think through the wording and the possible implications of framing a question this way. Many people came to the meeting tonight to express their concerns. We had a discussion about the mistakes that were made and how we can make this group as successful as possible. A hugely important part of any anti-oppression work is holding each other accountable for our words and actions, so this meeting was crucial. In moving forward, this group must be hyper aware of how we phrase our questions and present ourselves so that the Hampshire community understands our intentions clearly. Thank you to all who came to the meeting tonight. We hope you will continue to participate.
Meeting Notes October 26, 2010:
-Why are they anonymous?
-obscures the people speaking and makes them not want to come to the meeting because they can stay anonymous
-students, wanting to stay anonymous
-People answer the question: now what?
-Do we confront other themed housing?
-Are we related to WARF?
-What can happen next? What will happen with the blog? Who will use it?
-Issues with the phrasing of the question: having to justify the living spaces, targeting race based housing, questions it, made people really concerned because it threatened
-not wanting to give people who have privilege the place to hide and be anonymous
-unfair just to throw out this question as a “hot topic”
-being in identity based housing because people heard that the school was
-just putting out the question out without a context and explaining our group
-we are all in identity based housing, not forgetting about the queer, disability, etc.
-coming tonight out of fear of losing identity based housing
-what if we had phrased the question in terms of housing being mostly white?
-this group should look at broader issues: why are there divides? Why do we have to fight for ID based housing all the time?
-leaves the people in identity based housing to defend themselves and get attacked?
-fear that people have of being kicked off campus and being from an oppressed group, having a harder time finding housing?
-we should work to educate people about the importance of identity based housing and work to make it institutionalized
-are we working to be trained?
-keep history of Hampshire alive, look at the archives about identity based housing
-suggestions: should be held at the cultural center, the blog is badà the anonymity let’s people be racist
-we should leave it up! Give them a basis to know what the history is
-what are the plans in making sure that people are protected in sharing their views?
-are we having workshops?
-are we anti-oppression or anti-racism group?
-people don’t know about identity based house
-disability housing is not protected by community advocacy
-we should keep the blog, but also we should all put our posts there so it is not just a whole bunch of hate
-on the blog we should address the mistake made by the question, what was our intention?
-facilitation! We need to have trained facilitation
-things can come up that we might not be prepared for, talk about how we can do this
-have an outside facilitator
-do we want to raise the issue of US government?
-make clear that the posts are made by other people, not the group
-we were somehow successful in accomplishing the mission statement
-different ages and experiences come out in these discussions
-split up in little groups and discuss
